I get the coolest stuff in the mail. Why, just over a week ago, a perfect stranger sent along a foot-tall ghoul with a hook for one hand, a sword for the other. For a lonesome week, the ghoul was wrapped in a tall box covered in brown paper on my desk. My colleagues looked at it, wondered at it, shied away. They steered clear and waited for me to return from vacation when the mystery could be safely explored.

The ghoul sits to the right of me as I type. Tucked beneath his ghastliness is an envelope that also arrived while I was out. Inside is a very nice note from a woman who lives in my neighborhood. I didn’t know she lived in my neighborhood or that she knew I was nearby. I was flattered by the note.

I take pains to be sure the paper is not in reach of the ghoul man’s hook or sword, lest he take any sort of exception to it and give it a swipe.

Yes, cool stuff appears on my desk now and then. The Postal Service is sometimes like the list of grand jury indictments that I hunger for each month. I never know what I will find there, or if it will be pleasing or troublesome.

Poison ink

Of course, I am not immune to the poison pens that occasionally scratch ink through paper to be hurled in my direction. I’d be hurt if people didn’t direct scathing words at me now and again. It would feel as though I were failing on some level, or conducting myself in too generous a manner.

I go on and on about the nice stuff people send to me. It’s horribly unfair to those who send screeching letters with all the anger and disgust that they can suck from the inkwell. Those voices go unheard. So I need to start including some of them in this space, where the eye-watering buzz of that anger can be heard.

The author of the following letter sent his missive in response to a recent column. I know he’s from Sabattus, but I’ve been unable to contact him. I’d like to thank him for the letter and for his views. They are valid views and that’s why I’m sharing them. I’ll shut up now and get on with it.

“Sun Journal’s Crime Reporter: Mark LaFlamme: I’m responding to your article in last Friday’s paper. With the Fa, La La La! about Christmas lights on in October. Last I remembered, this was still a free country and just because you personally don’t like Christmas lights in October, tough!! If I would like my Christmas lights on in July, I’ll do it. I don’t need a person running around the city, finding things that he or she doesn’t like that I’m doing and writing his disgust of things he’s found possibly out of season on other people’s property. So I say to the gentleman with not too much to do and the Fa La La La La, I’ll say Fa La La La La to you, too.”

Tempest over tinsel

I’ve read the letter several times. I tried to ferret out traces of sarcasm or wry humor like a medical examiner searching for clues in the flesh of a corpse. There is none to be found, not even under a microscope. This letter writer is incensed.

And he’s right. Who was I to take shots at the blinking lights of the decorative home I drove past in downtown Lewiston, no matter what the date? I defend my right to go absolutely nuts around Halloween each and every year, and sometimes, I defend it loudly. If this nice man wants to hang tinsel and reindeers and snowmen outside his house in the blistering hot days of July, I will not condemn him. I will cringe every time I drive by his house because I feel Christmas is thrust upon us too early, but I will not criticize. Such is the difference between censorship and honest, negotiable disagreement.

I appreciate all the mail I receive, and each opinion tossed at me.

In this matter, it’s a soft debate. Frankly, I believe all the fa la la la las expressed in the column got to the man. He probably went around humming it all day and then blamed me for the malady. I mean, try it yourself this very moment. Start humming and then share it with your friends. Even with the blessed holiday so very near, the sound is like a dung beetle boring into your eardrum if you’re not prepared for it.

Not, by golly, that there’s anything wrong with the song itself. Or with dung beetles, for that matter. Both perfectly lovable contributions to our earth and our ways of life.

I may not agree with your dung beetles, mister.

But I defend your right to keep them.

As usual, I’ve said too much. That’s the mailbag for the week. I appreciate each word or trinket that was sent my way. And I appreciate the Puppet Master ghoul who, this very moment, is peering over my hands. Peering and scowling as though pondering the idea of shredding this entire piece of writing with a hook or a sword. And who could blame him?

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.